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Pattern of hospital admission before and following the Mental Health Act 1983

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

S. K. Durani
Affiliation:
Herts & Essex General Hospital, Bishop's Stortford, Herts
R. Ford
Affiliation:
Kings College, London
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The Mental Health Act brought a number of signficant changes to psychiatric practice. Among the most important were changes in the process of compulsory admissions. Other notable alterations have been a change in the definition of the nearest relative; a reduction in duration of treatment section by a half; a right to appeal against their detention by all patients; the observation section becoming an assessment and treatment section; the introduction of nurses holding power; the removal of age limits for admission of patients with psychopathic disorder and mental impairment, and the introduction of the treatability clause. These and other important differences could be expected to interact with social work and psychiatric practice to influence the number of compulsory admissions. Previous correspondence has examined this question, to which we add our findings.

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Articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989

References

Darvill, D. & White, A. (1987) Effects of the Mental Health Act 1983. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 11, 136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sackett, K. (1987) Effects of the Mental Health Act on compulsory admissions. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 11, 314316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winterton, M. J. & Barraclough, B. M. (1985) Effects of the 1983 Mental Health Act. Lancet, ii, 1426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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